eat, sleep, drink, urinate employability

I went to William Davies Voc Tech school and spent for years there studying to be "employable."

Davies is considered a district in itself. Lincoln, the town surrounding Davies has a median home income of $52,455, while Pawtucket the city from which the majority of the students come from has a median home income of $31,775 for a two parent household. However, the median home income for a single parent household (female) in Pawtucket is $23,391, and that is the situation that the majority of these young people are coming from. Central Falls and Providence, the other major areas that send kids to this school both have median household incomes in the low to mid $20,000. So, imagine if you will, taking the bus from the post-industrial city of Pawtucket passed the Broad street area of Cumberland, through the Valley Falls area of Lincoln and arriving at school in the middle of Lincoln surrounded by the mansions of Butterfly Way, Twin River, and CCRI.I live right next to Slater Mill, my parents have worked in factories since the time that my memory serves me. The factory conditions of school were usually quite obvious to me. So I went to Davies to learn a trade, I would follow my father who is a machine extruder and was able to use his sway as a skilled worker to help fight for improvements for himself and his unskilled fellow workers. I took auto body as my shop choice, hearing about the new water based paints that were being applied to electric vehicles I though it was an excellent avenue. I wanted to have a job, be in a union, and raise a family. The problem was I was imitating a dream that was already decades dead. Throughout the school day, with every new rule, every useless curriculum change, the work horse phrase was that everything being done to us was in the hope of increasing employability. Davies touted this as its achievement, a high ratio of its graduates were employed in their fields of study. This to we hear no in the discussion of the emphasis on science and math in public education. We need to get ahead of the curve on the bio-tech field, we need to develop educated workers to fit today's tech driven economy. Its almost laughable if it wasn't so sickening. The bells, the age limitations, the compartmentalization, the factory system of public education has bent so little to the needs of educating the whole human being! But this was a low income school and therefore the goals were reached if any one of us were tossed a middle income job, the rest of us showed claw passed out peers for the scraps of what is left. Jean Anyon describes a working-class school work as "mechanical, involving root behavior and very little decision making or choice." Until we contrive an education system that sees even working class students as worthy of a whole education, of mind and body, based on critical thinking, we reproduce the concept that the life of the working class is less valuable than the enriched classes.

Diary Entry #1: If only if only

Last Wed. a rally was held at the Bank of American building adjacent to Kennedy Plaza, it was called by Jobs With Justice and supported by the Providence IWW, local SEIU, DARE, and various local students. The aim was to deliver a demand letter to the charge executive of the Providence branch of B of A. We had street theater in the form of a fellow Wobbly dressed as a piggish banker, we had speakers including a JWJ member Micheal Criton who himself was foreclosed on by B of A. But most importantly we had solidarity, commuters waiting at the bus plaza fluxed in and out of the protest, some asking what our aim was other chanting right next to us. This was class solidarity, from students to grandmothers with their grandchildren came and beat on drums and blew noise makers or even simply honked their horns as they drove by. But ever present were two groups, reminders that between us and them were those well armed. The police stood on the street containing protesters on the side walk, smirking at our dialogues, barking orders, maintaining the personal appendage of the Panopticon's gaze. Then we marched, around the block towards the Textron building (waiving some loving salutes) towards the back of the B of A building. There we rallied again and waited while some tried to deliver our demand and grievance letter. Out there while we waved at cars as they passed by a middle aged, man passed by. Dressed in a tailored suit, a stressful face, pale and balding, his uneventful appearance matched his desire not to deviate from what he saw as acceptable practices. The man stopped and screamed "Stop this! are you idiots? these people give you jobs they are the reason you survive!" Of course he wasn't actually interested in a debate, and in this case the best thing to do as an organizer is push to continue the speeches and call-back chants to refusing to give legitimacy to his claims. But the interaction was pointed, many of us were angry, many were astounded. The myths of this socio-economic system permeates deeply in many people. It is encounters sch as this that reminds me that this is a time of class warfare, a time when those who own and those who believe they can own make every effort to force those who struggle to survive and live a  meaningful live onto their knees. In his mind we are to fall and beg the bankers to please do what you need to and reinvigorate our economy, the one you've imploded. This middle class white man would have us as serfs dreaming to be masters and through out his life he has been reinforced that this is right and this would be the correct order of things. Its up to us to fight that, to tear down his world and rebuild one with no kings, no bankers, no suits to separate us from the over-alls.

There's areason why capitalism was contrived by a white male merchant from Scotland....

Ohhh capitalism...your like that itch that wont go away and is responsible for millions of deaths. Or that burning sensation that just won't go away....what were we thinking getting involved with you? Penicillin won't fix this one, unfortunately, it will take immense class struggle, solidarity, and organizing to cure this disease. But like any diseases there are side effects that might by unseen, hidden by the more painful or prevalent symptoms. One of capitalism's most prolonged and socially damaging side effects has been the perpetuation of the myth of meritocracy to the point were it mirrored what Durkheim would marvel at as a homogeneous collective consciousness of capitalism. That is to saw we have ingrained capitalism into our mindset and inoculated against "socialistic" concepts and mental tendencies. In the arena of ideas in the American mind set meritocracy is the grand champ, of course it took the Tonya Harding approach of winning the gold. Meritocracy is defined as "Governance by elites who deserve to wield power because they possess merit (defined as 'intelligence plus effort') instead of by those who merely possess wealth or belong to privileged classes." (From www.businessdictionary.com) Of course its not the wealthy end of the spectrum that the mythological meritocracy rides his winged stallion to swoop in and defeat. Its the down trodden who are trampled by meritocracy's heavy hand when they raise a protest as to the conditions they are forced to live in. Of course like all myths, someone has to be decapitated before its over. Since the mid-1970's its the incensed poor and working poor whose wages have been forced to stare into the eyes of Medusa and remain stagnant. This while the Grendel-like creature known simply as globalization swings his club of deindustrialization and defecates gentrification onto every block. And like the 12 dwarfs we wait for prince charming and his marauding band of [insert political party affiliation] to make our world a better place to live. And its all because we were to damn lazy to fight back or to work harder! Really, come on working poor, 15 year old Vietnamese debt-slaves will do the work for .45 cents an hour while being threatened with rape and beatings by their Nike, Sony, and Apple overseers. You really think you can keep your job at minimum wage AND get sick days.....you should be thankful for having a job period. I mean if you work hard enough you can own the company right.....right....NAH just kidding get away from me with your food stamps.

If only it was framed this way. Instead meritocracy is instilled in the lives of millions of school kids daily not just in their history classes but in the science faires, in the football games, in all of this we frame the world around this individualistic threshing in which those who work hard succeed and those who fall to the ground can count themselves as the only source of their peril. Take for example drug use.

Meritocracy says: "Addicts and abusers got to where they are based on their flawed moral character and poor decision making. Had they been more observant and long-sighted in their decision making, had they been stronger willed they wouldn't have succumbed to drugs, alcohol, or other addictions."

Reality is however, poised to tell us a different story. A story Elliot Currie enlightens us with in his piece "The Futile War on Drugs." In explaining the fermentation of a culture of drugs and savage individualist capitalism which has arisen in concentrated urban minority communities Currie states. "The transformation of poo communities has, in shot been cultural as well as structural- involving subtler changes in values and attitudes as well as massive shifts in economic opportunities and standards of living." whoever he is quick to point out that the perceived savagery of this cultural shifts is in fact a "somewhat distorted version of the values that came to dominate all too much of mainstream economic life." So by the time of the "drug boom" of the mid-80's what a young minority man saw when he had the opportunity to meditate on his future was inconceivable unemployment or under employment, a lack of or non-existent government subsidized assistance to keep him from falling into poverty, gentrification pushing him farther and farther away from what is left of his community and social safety net, and a well to do white man in every SUV that drives down the freeway that dissects his neighborhood. I'd love to see John Wayne over come that one.

The difference here is one of methodological perspective, one sees the world through the lens of a social Darwinists individualistic ego-centrism. That is to say its always the wealthy who proclaim their own individual skills and merit as the harbingers of their wealth. Poor people tend not to proclaim, "if only I weren't so lazy and worked 16 instead of 12 hours a day, then I wouldn't be AS poor." The other methodological perspective views social trends and outcomes as the output of a system construed by a select few in which public policy, mass media, and funding is the scaffolding that erects what it pleases. In their analysis of the socio-economic roots of homelessness Timmer, Eitzen, and Talley state that, "the urban homeless problem is fundamentally a housing problem." That is the diagnosis is a condemnation of the system rather than the patient. It would be ridiculous for a physician to blame a patient for getting sick if they knew they were exposed to pathogen X or Y. Yet, this is what the myth of meritocracy perpetuates.

So how to do you kill the myth, by killing its hero. According to Timmer, Eitzen

"All government is big government, the question is big government for whom?" Howard Zinn